God given rights

It should awaken all believers to what has happened to this nation that was founded on Christian principles, that in the year 2015, a Christian baker and his wife have been ordered to pay $135,000 for supposedly causing “emotional, mental, and physical suffering.”

Sometimes it takes persecution to make us stronger, to make us stand together, and perhaps this is why God is allowing this new type of attack on Christianity in our modern times. I pray that Christians will awake, as a sleeping bear, and not only financially support Christians like this, but also go to the voting booth to vote for conservative candidates telling them we want no more of this. We need a revitalized new religious freedom amendment, since our original first amendment has been so bastardized by the court over the last few decades. It needs to be so word specific, that they can find no loop hole, and no way around it.

Aaron and Melissa Klein ran a small bakery called “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” for seven years in Gresham, Oregon, but had to shut down their store in 2013 after Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman filed a civil rights complaint against them. Administrative judge Alan McCullough ruled Friday that the funds will go to Cryer and Bowman for “emotional, mental, and physical suffering.”

Samaritan’s Purse is raising funds to assist the Klein’s and others like them who face financial distress and are punished for their sincerely held religious beliefs, convictions and conscience.

“They have taken a stand for the Word of God, and they should not have to stand alone,” Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham said. “I believe that Christians across our nation will rally around Aaron and Melissa and their five children.

“Please pray for Aaron and Melissa, and pray for our nation. When our judges are punishing Christians for practicing what they believe, that’s persecution, plain and simple.”

I am thankful that men like Franklin Graham have had the courage to speak out on these issues, and his organization is going to help this couple. They are taking donations through their persecuted Christians fund here. I encourage all brothers and sisters in Christ to donate.

Over the last 20 years I believe God has slowly taken me through the process of removing the 20th century American lenses from my eyes. Each of us is affected by the culture we live in, the trick is to recognize the cultural influences. Not all cultural influences are bad, but at the same time not all cultural influences are good.

As Christians we have to check our cultural influences by the only perfect measuring tool and that is the Bible. For instance, the Bible talks about freedom, but freedom in the Bible is not the same as how American culture views freedom. Biblical freedom has boundaries established by God, whereas American freedom has boundaries established by our Constitution. Many of our forefathers were Christians and there is a lot of Christian influence on how our government was formed. In the declaration of Independence our forefathers talked about the equality of man and rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that come not from men, but from God.

But at the end of the day – our Constitution, and by extension our culture, will allow us freedoms the Bible does not. The Bible talks about not using our liberty to engage in sinful (unbiblical) behavior:

Galatians 5:13(NASB)

“For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.”

I Peter 2:16(NASB)

“As God’s slaves, live as free people, but don’t use your freedom as a way to conceal evil.”

So no matter what freedoms our country or culture allows us, we must check that freedom with God’s Word. Let me give an example that I think Christian Feminists, Egalitarians, Complementarians and those who believe in Biblical Patriarchy. Our culture allows men and women the freedom to live together and have sex outside of marriage, the Bible does not allow this freedom.

So how does this relate to gender roles? Many egalitarians and feminists ask today as these questions:

“How is it fair that man gets to pursue a career and woman must stay home to take care of her small children?”

“Why can they not share the duties of provision and care taking? Is she not as free as he is to pursue a career?”

The answer to both these questions is that woman does not have the same freedoms and responsibilities as man. She does not have the same freedoms, or responsibilities her husband has. She does not have the freedom to usurp authority over her husband, or man in general. She does not have the freedom to leave her responsibilities of caring for her children and her home to others so she can pursue a career.

Likewise, a man does have the freedom to leave his responsibility to provide and stay home and be a Mr. Mom. I know Mr. Moms exist, but this is completely and utterly unbiblical for man. It just as wrong for man to do this as it is for a woman to leave her infant child with others (even her husband) to pursue a career. A man does not have the freedom to abandon his responsibility to lead the home to his wife. Even if his wife is more intelligent and talented then him, he must still exercise leadership. He should lean on his wife for advice like any other man should, but at the end of the day the leadership of the home is always his, he is not free to give this up.

A man does not have the freedom to not protect his family. If his family is threaten, he is to be the first line of defense in front of his wife and children, God hates cowardly behavior.

I am not against a woman working, woman have worked since the beginning of mankind. But women in the Bible only worked outside the home for small amounts of time and their focus was always on their home, not what they did outside their home. If they had a business, like making clothes and linens, this was done from the home while they care for their children and home, they did not have careers outside the home like women today.

Speaking of freedoms, not only does the Bible sometimes not allow something that our cultural may allow, but sometimes it allows or grants rights or freedoms that our cultural does not allow. For example, I have the right to worship God as I believe he would have me do, and no Government has the right to stop me from worshiping as I will. Daniel prayed to God even though it might mean his death, we are called to do the same. We are told in these instances, that we are to obey God rather than man.

I believe God has given man the right of self-defense. So I have the right to defend my family, with firearms or whatever I think is right, even if the government tries to take those things away.

I was hesitant to reveal this next freedom I believe we have to this site. The reason is I don’t want it to be a distraction and I know a lot of Christians(most modern Christians), even complementarians and many Biblical Patriarchy advocates will disagree with me this. What I am talking about is Polygamy, or more specifically Polygyny. This is when a man has more than one wife. I realize just the discussion of this brings up all kinds of feelings in both men and women, but I would strongly argue that this is because of the culture we have been brought up in. In other cultures this is perfectly acceptable to both men and women.

As I said previously culture does not determine what is right or wrong, God does. The point of this site is not to promote polygamy, I am in monogamous marriage and intend to stay that way. My wife and I talked about my views of marriage, sexuality and even polygamy before we were married. She knows my views, and she agreed with them. We just agreed we were not going to practice polygamy, but that the practice itself is not wrong. We do not condemn the Biblical Patriarchs for their polygamous lifestyles and we believe it was allowed and even blessed by God. It was regulated in the Law of Moses.

The reason I bring up polygamy, even knowing the extremely negative connotation it has in our society, because you cannot have an honest discussion about how God has designed men and women, and more specifically man’s nature, without bringing up man’s polygamous nature.

Do I think a Christian man can successfully live in monogamous relationship even though I believe God designed him with a polygamous nature? Of course it’s possible and I and many other Christian men who live in monogamous Christian marriages are proof of that. But Christian men need their wives to understand their polygamous nature, in order to help the husbands have a successful monogamous relationship.

I will have more to say on this in a separate post. I truly hope and pray, that those of you reading this will not write off everything I have to say because you believe polygamy to be disgusting and against God’s design for marriage. I hope you will read what I have to say on the subject and hear me out first.

Even if you still disagree in the end, there is still a lot of Biblical truth on this site about God’s design for man and woman. Much of the struggles we have in our culture today is because we refuse to accept how God had designed man and woman. We tell men they should be more like women, and women they should be like men. We infuse our cultural values on the Bible and we refuse to take off our 20th century American lenses and see the Bible as it is, not as our culture would have it. I hope and pray you will open you mind and be able to recognize some of these truths.